I used to work for the union that represents the Grand Hyatt workers. We had a wonderful work stoppage there once, about some sulfuric acid that was dripping out of the rooftop a/c system. You can read about it here: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2003/08/23/2003-08-23_hyatt_walkout_hotel_workers_.html The hotel has a love-hate relationship with its room service. Many sports teams (including the Orioles, as the article mentions) treat the Hyatt as their official hotel in NYC because it's the only hotel in the city with 24-hour full room service. Thus the room service brings in millions of dollars a year. However, in order to have hot meals 24/7, the hotel has to keep a tournant (hot-line cook) on the job 24/7. Tournants earn about $24 an hour, room service waiters earn about $11 (I'm guessing what the pay rates are these days, back then it was $19 and and $8, I recall). Other hotels in NYC also claim "24-hour room service," but what they really have after 11pm or so is just an $11/hour waiter bringing cold food up on a tray. (The hotels also have the option under the contract of paying one person to work as both tournant and server at the $24 rate; maybe the Hyatt does that after midnight or so; I don't know.) The Times article tries to wonder if the advent of the Hyatt Market represents a sea change in our culture, that we now prefer speed to luxury (and, as Dan points out, don't care so much about the tabu on labor anymore). I doubt it. It seems like just another Starbucks-type place. Today's leisure class doesn't seem to think of waiting on line to get our arugula salad as tabu labor. Rather, I think the article made it into the Times because so many Times readers commute through Grand Central Station and might want to give the Market a try for breakfast. Then the reporter just added on some thinky stuff.

Times thinky stuff can be very naive, however. Today's article "A Mine Boss Inspires Fear, but Pride, Too" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/us/08blankenship.html?hp is an attempt at praise of the owner of the chronically unsafe mine where at least 25 people are now dead in an explosion earlier this week. The article makes me sick, and I commented accordingly:

> "Yet even some of his longstanding adversaries respect his commitment to his principles."

What principles? Putting his profits over human lives? Copying the ancient tactic of dangling an extra few bucks' pay in front of his employees in order to keep them from having safety and pensions?

Who speaks well of this man? A few employees who've fallen for his ancient method of manipulating worker's thoughts and fears. A lawyer who has cut settlements with him (out of which I'm sure the lawyer gets a comfy percentage. Great gig -- open your law practice near a sleazy mine owner, wait for the deaths and the suits to roll in, then sue and settle with the guy out of court. Of course the lawyer "respects" this scum, he's his meal ticket.) People who are more economically independent of him have nothing nice to say at all.

I find it really disturbing that the NYT tried to write a flattering profile of this person. It speaks to our current worship of any CEO or financier who manages to get rich, no matter how they did it. (Admit it NYT -- you think Dick Fuld, Hank Greenberg, and these other billionaire capitalist ubermen who wrecked the economy are superior to plumbers and waitresses, don't you? And you think this guy is superior to the workers he's killed.)

The article is also just childlike in treating his anti-union tactics as if they're an outgrowth of some complex set of "principles" he's developed. They're just ways to keep a union out that you can find in any union-busting guide of the past 70 years. Union mines are proven safer than non-union mines. The miners would be home with their families today if the boss weren't a greedy you-know-what. He's not smart, he's not complex, he doesn't inspire pride -- he's the same sleazy employer who was a heartless killer in 1890, in 1932, in 1955, and now today.